Leap of Faith
by dear-lovely
Summary: "No, Penelope. I'm saying that you should take a leap of faith."


This story was written for the Fourth Round of the Seventh Season of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I'm writing as Beater 1 for the Tutshill Tornados.

Name of the round: **Don't Take Things Out of Context**

Prompt for Beater 1: **"The bounce has gone from his bungee."** -Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave

These are the optional prompts I'm using:

4\. [quote] **'I reserve actual terror for only the most special of occasions.'** -Monstress, Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

12\. [quote] **'You know what they say about truth and the appearance of truth being opposites.'** -The Power, Naomi Alderman

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the world J.K. Rowling has created.

Thanks to my team for betaing!

WARNING: I briefly talk about how cancer and death affect certain people in this story. I know from personal experience that cancer is a shitty thing to go through, whether you're the cancer patient, family or friend of the patient, or the doctors and nurses trying to do everything they can to heal the patient. I did my best to portray the seriousness that comes with working with cancer, but I don't know it all since I'm not a doctor or anything of the sort. If you're going through or have gone through something like this, my heart goes out to you.

* * *

Title: **Leap of Faith**

Words: 2408

Justin Finch-Fletchley spent the whole morning exploring the area around his new flat in Muggle London. It was a conscious decision for him to start the new era of his life as magic-free as possible outside of work, due to the repercussions they'd all faced a little over a year ago during the Battle of Hogwarts. He'd just finished his eighth year at Hogwarts and was prepared to move on. Besides, this was how he grew up, and he knew he should be proud of his Muggle side as much as his magical side.

His stomach rumbled in indignation, causing him to check his watch that read half past ten. Fully aware of the fact that he didn't have enough in his system to explore any longer, he paused his trek and entered the nearest restaurant. Upon entering, Justin could smell the aromatic scent of the various kinds of pasta cooking up in the kitchen. Right then and there, he knew he made the right choice to go in there.

A waiter approached him with a friendly smile. "How many sir?"

He held up a finger. "For one."

"Right this way."

The waiter sat Justin down at the corner booth next to the restroom, which came with the territory of eating alone. He knew from this position he would have to either make awkward eye contact with everyone who left the restroom or keep his head down throughout the whole meal. Between these two options, he elected the latter. Still, he didn't mind it because he enjoyed the solitude. In fact, he welcomed it. That's why he jumped in his seat when a tall, willowy young woman plopped down into the seat in front of him and began unloading items from her bag.

"Sorry, I'm a bit late. There was traffic on the tube and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to navigate my way here. How are you, Dan_—"_

She stopped mid-sentence as soon as she realized her mistake. "Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry to bother you. I should've made sure I was in the correct table before I sat down."

Justin gave her a pity smile. "No worries," he said. "I'm sure there are many blokes who also have dark hair and a bad posture. It's hard to differentiate between us all."

Her cheeks grew steadily pinker. "Ha, right. Of course." She started to gather the stuff she'd just set down. "Well, I'm still very sorry about this, and I'll let you get back to your meal, Mister..."

He held out his hand. "Finch-Fletchley. But I go by Justin."

Her eyebrow quipped up. "Justin Finch-Fletchley?" she repeated slowly. "From Hufflepuff?"

His eyes bulged. "You went to Hogwarts?"

She nodded. "Yes. If I'm not mistaken, I believe I was a prefect when you came in."

"Then how would you have remembered me? I know you weren't the Hufflepuff prefect or else I'd remember you," Justin probed.

Suddenly, her attention swayed to the door of the restaurant. Justin turned around saw a broad-shouldered man in his twenties looking around the place. As soon as his eyes landed on them, he started walking towards them.

She turned back to Justin quickly and said, "I'm sure you'll remember once you thought about it hard enough. Sorry to bother you once again, but it was nice bumping into you!" She waved as she left the booth to meet the other man.

"I_—" _Justin called out, but it was of no use as she was already redirecting the man's path to the other side of the restaurant, solely focusing on what he had to say. He watched them as they interacted with each other, wondering what they could possibly be saying. Both of them looked so serious, as if the conversation wasn't suited for anywhere outside of closed doors. But in an instant, Justin saw the grown man break down into tears while the woman was stone-faced, looking very uncomfortable. The man stood up and stormed out of the restaurant without a second glance.

Justin studied the woman's face once more, trying to remember how she would've known him. What would someone like her have in common with_ him_? As far as he knew, she looked more successful than he could ever dream to be; she ran in completely different circles than he did, and she was undoubtedly tougher than he could ever be as previously proved with the sobbing man. It was strange seeing a fellow wizard in the Muggle world, though. And, to add onto that, she looked like she actually belonged.

The realization hit him like a freight train. "Oh, my Merlin," he whispered to himself. Abandoning his corner booth without a second thought, he quickly made his way over to the woman. Once he was in front of her table, he spoke. "Penelope Clearwater. Ravenclaw. We were both petrified in my second year."

She looked up at him with a sad smile and said, "Knew you would get it." She gestured for him to sit down in the seat the other man had vacated just a few moments before. "Don't worry; he won't come back."

He complied and sat down across from her. The waiter from before came up to their table and they ordered their entrees, lasagna for Justin and spaghetti aglio olio for Penelope. There was a beat of silence before Justin failed to wrangle his curiosity further. "If I may ask, what happened to him?" he inquired.

Penelope turned away slightly with a subtle look of shame hinted on her face. "Just doing my job; that's all," she responded.

"If your job is to make grown men cry, I'd say that you've become quite the professional," Justin teased.

Her eyes wandered everywhere except on him. "Well..."

He blanched. "That's not your job… right?" he asked, apprehensive about what she would say next.

"Not exactly, but it's starting to feel that way," she mumbled. He waited for her to explain and after another moment of silence, she continued. "I work at a Muggle hospital just a couple of stops away from here. I'm the person who tells people they have cancer."

Justin's jaw dropped. "I, uh," he stammered, "I don't know what to say to that. It must be terrible to do that."

She nodded, her eyes cast down in shame. "Every time I do it, I feel a piece of humanity leave me. It crushes me every single time, but someone has to do it, right?" She shrugged as if it wasn't a huge deal at all.

"Don't doctors usually do that though? In their office, with the white walls and hospital smell?" Justin questioned.

Penelope looked up at him, startled. "Oh yeah, I forgot I've never talked to you before now," she stated, as a matter of fact, not intending on sounding harsh. "I'm a Muggle doctor, but I prefer to get out of the hospital to break this kind of news. I've never been here before, but he suggested we go eat here because it's his favorite restaurant." She looked down once again, "I hope it still is."

As a fated attempt to clear the dreary air around them, their food arrived. Both of them dived into their respective dish with only the heady aroma filling the space between them. To say the least, it was an awkward meal between two strangers. But somehow, Justin built up the courage to speak halfway into their meal. "I'm guessing that being a Muggle doctor isn't your ultimate dream in life. Correct?"

Penelope tore her eyes away from her spaghetti and looked into his eyes, trying to formulate an appropriate answer. "To be quite honest, it's not how I planned my life to go at all. I only studied to become a Muggle doctor because I wanted to have a baseline knowledge about medicinal practices before entering a Healer program. It's just that I fell into doing the whole nine yards of the Muggle sector."

"And how did you end up working with cancer patients?" Justin asked.

She sighed. "Not a lot of doctors liked going that direction, but I wanted to help them. In my head, I understood the horror that goes into dealing with cancer and its victims. But it's one thing to understand it mentally and a whole other thing to actually deal with it. Before I took on this position, I reserved actual terror for only the most special of occasions. Then, after doing this for some time, I realized that all of these occasions were the most special to these patients' lives, and the culmination of every instance turned into something of normalcy for me. It feels very monstrous of me to think of cancer as something that's so normal. Plus, thinking about all the times I had to see patients die after doing everything I could've done is traumatizing. I'd even resort to Healer magic as a last resort, but to no avail in some cases."

In a moment of clarity, Justin reached out and held her hand. "It's not your fault if your patient dies, okay? You're doing the best you can to help these people and that's what matters the most at the end of the day. A lot of people get cancer and even _more_ people die. Both of those circumstances are not preventable. It's just the cost of living."

She smiled weakly. "Yeah, I know that everyone has to die at some point. But it's depressing when those points for several people happen at my own hands. I know that their cancer is responsible for their death instead of me, but I'm supposed to be the one to prevent that from happening in the first place. How am I supposed to continue on when I know that I won't be able to do my job in certain situations?"

He squeezed her hand. "You just need to believe that you're doing your all. Nothing you do to try to save someone's life will be seen as a waste."

"There's no way that everything I've done hasn't been a waste!" she threw her hands in the air out of exasperation. "Just like you said before, death is inevitable, so _why am I wasting my time trying to stop it_?" She slumped onto the table, and her head fell inside her arms.

Justin scratched his scalp in irritation. He knew that he needed to find another way to explain it. "You know what they say about truth and the appearance of truth being opposites, right?" he started.

She looked up and gave him a puzzled look but went along with him anyways. "I think I've heard that before, but I don't really understand it."

The ideas were forming in his head on the spot until he constructed the perfect analogy. "Okay, let's put it this way," he settled. "Imagine you're on the edge of a bridge with a bungee cord strapped on. You saw what happened with the person before you, so you mentally prepare yourself for what's about to happen to you. Then, you jump off and it feels entirely different than it seemed two minutes ago. Instead of fearfulness, you feel pure bliss. Instead of feeling like you have to puke everywhere from the motion sickness, you feel frozen in time. You may think to yourself, 'The bounce has gone from the bungee,' but in actuality, you've never flown like this before."

Even more confused than before, she softly followed with, "What are you saying? That I should throw myself off a cliff in order to feel like I'm completely still? If I wanted to be unmovable, I would've stayed petrified."

He shook his head, seeing straight through the humor of her statement and acknowledging her actual fear by squeezing her hand once more. "No, Penelope. I'm saying that you should take a leap of faith. That leap of faith means that you wholeheartedly have faith in the fact that you are making a difference in other people's lives, even if you don't have a shred of evidence supporting that fact. Faith in the unknown is the bravest feat a human could ever conquer."

They both stayed there for a moment, letting everything that was just said sink in. After a pause of silence, Penelope sat up again and composed herself. With both hands, she took his hand and shook it. "Thank you so much, Justin. I really needed to hear that," she uttered in a tearful voice, as she let go of his hand. "I've been spending all of this time trying to find the answers that no one has ever found before, but I think I've been focusing on the wrong aspect of my work. I need to think about all the lives I've saved and all the communities I helped strengthen just by doing my job. It's just that the negative side always takes up more room in my mind."

Justin smiled at her. "Any sane human would be the same way. Trust me, I think I'd be a total wreck if I were in your position. You're a powerhouse, and you should embrace that."

She left her napkin on the table and gathered her things. "You're right, I'm stronger than I think! I need to believe in myself more." She stopped to think for a second, then added, "Plus, I'm a bloody witch! That makes me even more powerful!" With a wad of pounds, she threw enough money for both their meals on the table and stood up with a beam on her face. "I have to go back to the hospital now, but thank you so much, Justin. You've no idea how much it means to me that I bumped into you today out of all days."

"It's no problem. You're doing great things and you should be reminded of it," he reiterated.

With a simple wave, she said goodbye to him and left the restaurant. His eyes followed where she walked and noticed that she bumped into a mother and her child on the pavement. After a polite "Excuse me," the conversation immediately turned into an emotional reunion. As Penelope checked the woman's prosthetic arm, her eyes grew bright when she was introduced to her daughter.

Justin turned back to his meal, smiling to himself. He knew that even if he never saw Penelope again, they both would never forget this day for as long as they lived.


End file.
